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Thursday, April 10, 2014

Candy

Kevin Brooks, author of Kissing the Rain, Martyn Pig, Lucas excels at portraying the gritty details of English underclass life, and here, in a story of a boy desperately in love, he has written an irresistibly suspenseful and compelling YA novel.When Joe Beck, a fifteen-year-old suburban kid, gets lost in a disreputable neighborhood on his way to an appointment in London, he is struck dumb by his first sight of beautiful and seemingly innocent Candy. She talks with him, teases him, but reveals nothing about herself except her phone number. Later they have a perfect day at the London Zoo, and soon Joe is as addicted to Candy as she is to heroin, in spite of the threats of her menacing pimp Iggy. Almost nothing matters except his desire to free her from her terrible life-- not his band's chance for a recording contract, not the song he has written for her that has become a hit without him. But there is something that still matters to him, and when he rescues the young prostitute from her sordid rooming house and takes her into hiding to sweat out her addiction, Iggy finds and uses that one thing that is stronger than Joe's passion for Candy, in a heart-thumping, breathless conclusion. Wow, this book was amazing! I loved the story and it was amazingly written with amazing characters that showed their flaws throughout the story. I felt this book was a cross between Ellen Hopkins Crank (minus being not written in verse) and Looking For Alaska By John Green. I felt like there was so many parts to this book that i loved and wanted to write down and have that part of the story forever, those words and those feelings forever wrapped up inside of my head. So in the end, I thought the ending was good, not sad but not overly happy either, a happy medium I guess. I would defiantly recommend it to anyone looking for a read simailar to Crank.